Wednesday, 10 February 2016

A Hexagon per TD

With the Irish general election looming fast, I've been dusting off my mapping skills.

The political geek in me loves poring over election results and the geoscientist in me loves maps.The maps in this blog combine both.

The maps couldn't be simpler: there is one hexagon per TD. These sort of maps were all in abundance prior to the UK general election in 2015 (e.g. here's a summary) but I haven't seen one for Ireland yet.

Using this map, we can plot the full results of the general election on a single graph—always tricky in multi-seat constituencies—and poor old Dublin doesn't need a separate map to see what is going on in the densely populated capital.

Every hexagon is the same size so there is no population density distortion. This means that the map isn't geographically true so Dublin constituencies take over most of the eastern bulge. This map shows where your constituency lies as coloured hexagons, with a constituency list on the right hand side.